The iMac won best secondary equipment award despite its recent arrival to market. Paul Scott, channel manager for Apple beamed: "iMacs appeal to schools because they are powerful, easy to use and stylish." So will iMacs be the computer of choice for schools in the 21st century? "Its too early to tell but some Local Education Authorities, like Edinburgh and Durham are definitely ordering a lot," Scott said.

Apple also has a stake in Tesco Schoolnet 2000 which was selected as best educational Web site. The site has already been selected as a millennium product and will be showcased in the dome next year. The project was set up last year by Tesco, Exemplar and the New Millennium experience company. Work from schoolchildren aged three to 18 is published on the site daily.

So far 12,000 schools have registered to the project. Once registered, children and teachers are given a password and can then submit work to the site. Security has been a paramount consideration and there are several checks done before work goes live. John Hobden an advisory teacher involved in the project predicts the site will have 1.5 million pages by the end of the year. "It will be the most accurate source of data about life in the nineties anywhere in the UK," he said.

A spokeswoman for Xemplar, the technology partner in the project, said of the award: "We are delighted. We hope this project has a life beyond the year 2000. It is such a valuable resource and could be extended outside of school to homes and libraries."